Meta

Category / Climate Change

Military reports warn that impending energy problems will endanger Western society and threaten to weaken ties between states and their citizens, undermining the very foundations of democracy and the rule of law. Energy issues will also set the stage for more aggressive geopolitics and will substantially destroy the ecosystem services on which society is wholly dependent. These are but a few of the impacts that the double energy problem of climate change and oil decline have in store for us.

In this illuminating book, attorney and pragmatic visionary Roger Cox sets out and analyses these energy stress tests, going on to explain why neither the market mechanism nor today’s political model are capable of initiating an energy revolution to solve these issues. This deadlock situation has the potential to bring about the very downfall of Western society, as this book explains, and will at the very least put Western countries at risk of committing domestic human rights violations on a scale nobody had thought to ever see again after World War II.

Precisely this threat of human rights violations puts the judiciary in a position to step in and lead Western governments out of the dangerous deadlock. Drawing and expanding on examples and cases from the US, the UK, the Netherlands, Europe and the European Union, this book demonstrates that the West’s legal systems already contain all the elements needed to achieve an energy revolution faster and more effectively then any other alternative.

We can lower our emissions in two ways.

Energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are the majority of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The fight against climate change has become a defining feature in energy policy-making, but the implications are daunting. Meeting the emission goals pledged by countries under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) would still leave the world 13.7 billion tonnes of CO2 – or 60% – above the level needed to remain on track for just 2ºC warming by 2035.

We can lower our emissions in two ways. First, by lowering CO2 emissions on the supply side, for example by switching from electricity generation from fossil fuels to renewables, or deploying carbon capture and storage. Second, lower emissions on the consumption side by reducing consumption, substituting use – e.g. using a bicycle for a short journey instead of a car – and improving efficiency. Society’s benefit from these measures is likely to be equal or greater than the cost to the energy sector, even setting aside the climate benefit.